1. When should an author share a preview of their book versus a full copy?

Ideally, an author should begin sharing a preview of their book prior to publication to generate preorders before the book’s release. However, if the book is already available, they should go ahead and put up a preview of several chapters and enter a sales link for the readers to “click to purchase” a copy of the book upon completion of the preview.If sales are stagnant, or have waned significantly, we recommend sharing the full book with a “cap” on the number of copies that can be read for free.

2. How many chapters of a preview should an author share?

Most sites have a preview feature inviting readers to read a sample chapter or two of the books offered (e.g., B&N’s “Read Instantly”; Amazon’s “Look Inside”). This is typically for readers who have heard of the author or book and have taken the initiative to search that book and decide if they want to purchase it. Chances are, a chapter or two may be sufficient to motivate the reader to purchase the book because they already knew of the book to search it out. On BookGrabbr, the author is pushing their book out through social media to readers that may have never heard of them before. Sharing a minimum of one-third of the book is something that we strongly recommend. There needs to be enough of the book shared to motivate a buying behavior from readers—enough to entice them to want to read more! For most readers, and the behaviors we have seen on our site thus far, we’ve noticed a higher “click-to-purchase” rate when our authors have shared a minimum of one-third of their book.

3. Explain what a “cap” is and what that number should be?

A cap is when an author or publisher places a maximum number of “grabb’s” for a full book. For example, if an author places a 200 “cap” on his/her book, our system only allows the first 200 people who “grabb” that book to read it. After that, the book is rendered inactive. At this point the author has the option to reset the cap or change the book into a preview for further marketing. Whatever the case, re-sharing is a must at this point!

4. How often should an author be sharing?

Our most successful authors share once every 5-6 days. The first time an authors shares, only around 20-25% of their friends/followers/connections will actually see the post. So, by posting multiple times and telling your friends about your “free promotion”, (whether it be a preview of your book or the full book itself) they are more likely to “grabb” it and share with their friends.

5. What if an author only has one social media account?

That’s not a problem, although generally speaking we do recommend having multiple social media accounts even if you don’t use BookGrabbr! That said, if you only have 1 social media account, say Twitter, you can still upload your title to BookGrabbr and share it to your friends and followers. When readers “grabb” your book, they will share it with their friends in order to receive the content. The “share” is the currency! Additionally, when people come to our site organically and find a book, they have the option to use any other social platform that they want, as long as they share with their friends. And, they might use a network an author may not normally be on, thus generating exposure and brand awareness through a channel they weren’t marketing in originally.

6. How is Facebook different from Twitter and LinkedIn when it comes to authors sharing?

Twitter and LinkedIn allow for pre-filling verbiage for the author, which makes the sharing experience a little more streamlined. Facebook doesn’t allow any website to prefill content to someone’s post on anyone’s behalf. When authors share on Facebook they will click, “Share to Facebook”, type in their own message (the “call to action”) to their followers, and then click “Share”.

7. What kind of analytics should an author expect? What is considered a good “analytic” result?

We provide analytics that will aid our authors in being able to track the practical value behind what BookGrabbr’s platform provides.

1. How many people have “grabb’d” your book. If an author has a relatively small social following, or they are sharing a preview of a book that has been out for a while they can expect a lower amount of “grabb’s”. This isn’t a bad thing because the impressions will still most likely be in the thousands and thousands of impressions motivate buying behavior.

2. How many impressions (2nd generation down the social ladder) your book is having across all four social channels. (SEE DEFINITION OF IMPRESSIONS BELOW). BookGrabbr can tell you exactly how many people’s newsfeeds all the way down the social media “ladder” your book is showing up on.These are directly linked to how many “grabb’s” a book has. Readers have to share to be able to “grabb” and impressions are directly linked to how many newsfeeds on average a book is showing up on across social media. When a reader “grabb’s” a book, it is shared with all of their friends and shows up on their friends’ newsfeeds. We can mine accounts to tell you how many of those newsfeeds have your book on them. We only track second generation of newsfeeds and beyond. Authors already know how many friends they have. They are more interested in knowing how many people who aren’t following them can see their book. We provide that analytic in the form of “impressions”.

3. What social media platforms are bringing you the strongest results. Even if an authors shares to Twitter alone, for example, keep in mind that readers have the option to share wherever they want. We have had authors only share to one social media platform and they ended up having more shares on a completely different platform because their friends on Twitter chose to share to another platform.

4. How many people have clicked our “Buy Now” button. We have a unique and awesome “Buy Now” tool which allows BookGrabbr to track sales to the destination of the author’s/publisher’s choice! Whenever an author/publisher goes through the process of “Adding a Book” to our site, they type in a sales link. Once the reader finishes the preview or even the full book, the reader can click the “Buy Now” button and he/she will be taken to the purchase site stipulated in the link. This gives the reader the opportunity to purchase full copies of the book in physical or e-book format.

5. What demographics are reading my book. Our readers are logging in through social media and part of the generic information we can provide to authors is the percentage male to female demographics reading their books. Some people who use social media don’t specify their gender on their profiles so we also provide the percentage of users who are unknown. Example- [Male- 20%/ Female 70%/ Unknown 10%]

6. What cities do my readers come from? We can tell you what cities your readers are coming from to give you a good idea of where in the country your book is being read!

7. What countries are my readers reading in? Since every person on social media is one generation away from a friend in a foreign country, it is important to know that our marketing platform creates the opportunity for people in other countries to have access through our system to your preview or book! We simply want to show you where those readers are coming from.

8. How many people are clicking the notifications link within our app to purchase your book? Anytime we offer a chance for a reader to purchase your book we show you the results. Step number four for authors (number 3 for publishers) is “Send a message”. This allows authors to send a notification within our app to readers informing them of another book or physical copy available and include a link to take the readers wherever they want to purchase. This is the analytic that shows how many people have clicked that link.

8. Is BookGrabbr a company that sells books?

We don’t sell books directly, and here’s why: we know what we are good at and what we want to do best—marketing. Through our unique marketing tool and platform, we help authors connect to readers that they wouldn’t generally be able to connect to through their friends and their friend’s friends. The noise in the marketplace is deafening, and at times can be a bit overwhelming for authors trying to promote their books.Someone has described Bookgrabbr as being like a “5-hour energy drink” for your book marketing. It’s already in you; we just give you that extra marketing boost for the maximum potential! Kind of silly, we know; but what a great analogy. That said, we created a way to generate some more buzz by harnessing the power of each individual author’s social media platform. And by us not selling books and just focusing on marketing, we allow the author/publisher to push their readers to their site of choice to purchase the book in the format that they desire. Books are generally sold for about the same price on almost all online sites, but we know that there are better margins ($$$) on some sites than others, so we strongly suggest sending the reader to the place that has them paying the exact same price, except you make the most money! And since we don’t make any money on book sales, you can send them to a retailer, or to your own personal page or wherever you choose! We just want to help you sell more books, gain momentum, generate, exposure, and make more money.

9. How is BookGrabbr different from other book marketing sites?

Most book marketing sites invite the reader to come to them to search authors and publishers. BookGrabbr pushes previews and books out through the author’s social media network so that readers can be exposed to authors that they’ve never heard of before. Our platform encourages an increase in readership for each author. Our Chief Sales Officer said it best, “Other sites are the retailers and malls that sell the book, which is absolutely important and crucial, but Bookgrabbr is the ‘door-to-door’ sales person knocking on the doors of people you know through social media and promoting your book by having a real life person tell another person about it. There is no better marketing than the recommendation of a friend and BookGrabbr bottles that up and facilitates that in a digital way.”

10. Why do you suggest to authors to continue using your services long term?

Just as authors will continue building their social media following, they will want to continue the process of marketing to their new followers the books they are writing. For example, if an author, say in January has 400 followers on any platform, and he/she shares a preview of his/her upcoming book on BookGrabbr, those 400 followers can share it to read it. When they share it, they are inviting their friends to share to read as well. That exposes the authors to thousands of new people through social media. If that same author builds their following on that platform at an average of 10 new followers a month—and they continue to share their free preview to those 10 followers to grab and share—that will increase not just their following on that particular platform, but will also result in brand new “Grabb’s” which are, in essence, recommendations by those new followers that choose to read the preview. As social media grows so will the marketing effect of BookGrabbr.

11. Step #3 for the Publisher, which is the same as step #4 for the author says, “Send a message…” What does this do and who does the message go to?

This message goes to those readers who have specifically “Grabb’d” their book. Most readers who are reading a book and enjoying that book don’t mind hearing more from the author that wrote that book. Even and especially if it is to encourage the reader to purchase a physical copy of the book or check out another book that author has written. If a reader likes an author’s book, chances are, they will read another one.

12. What is the potential market reach for an author?

If an author’s book is “Grabbd” (downloaded) 50 times, and each of those 50 people that are reading their book has 250 friends (less than the average number of “friends” the average Facebook user has), the totalamount of impressions on Facebook would be 12,500. That means that author’s book would be showing up on over 12,500 news feeds across Facebook.

13. What is a “Grabb”?

A “Grabb” occurs when someone “clicks” a “Grabb” button next to a book. The book appears in their library within BookGrabbr and they have the ability to read the book right there within our site. For example, if an author has 100 “Grabbs” that means that 100 people has his/her book in their BookGrabbr library available for them to read.

14. What is an “Impression”?

An impression is when someone has seen that a particular book is available on their newsfeed on whatever social media account the book has been shared to. Impressions are how many eyeballs have actually seen an author or reader’s post/share, regardless of how many generations “down the ladder” it goes. If an author/reader shares a book to their social media account, however many friends they have that will see the share, is how many impressions have occurred.

15. Why should an author share a full copy of their book through BookGrabbr?

BookGrabbr created an e-reader that is very quality, but very basic. This is good for the authors and publishers sharing through BookGrabbr. We aren’t the destination spot for all readers, just the “middle man” for them to read and then decide to purchase. People are used to reading on iBook, the Nook, Kindle and most readers still prefer the touch and feel of a real (physical) book to an E-book. Authors will be sharing the content of their books at their discretion through BookGrabbr to captivate a market of readers that they wouldn’t otherwise capture. Then, the author will have the ability to send notifications within the BookGrabbr app to those currently reading their books to promote the purchase the physical books in paper or hardback format. Even the most well-known authors will be sharing full copies of their books on BookGrabbr, but they will all be placing “caps” on the number of readers that have access to their books. Many authors place a small cap to increase readership and spike their readership and then edit the full book within our system following our tutorial videos to a preview and then re-share the preview to their followers to gain even more exposure.All readers will have the option and ability to purchase the book through our system in a format that they prefer. Plain and simple, more content means more readers, which means a larger audience to re-market to through the BookGrabbr notifications section. More content means more reviews both on BookGrabbr, blogs, and other sites. Since authors are constantly trying to find new readers, build their brand, cultivate a community, and create a loyalty among those readers, sharing a full copy of the book is the perfect way to do this—When an author shares a full copy we ALWAYS recommend them setting a “cap” on the number of readers that have access to their book. This keeps the author/publisher in control of how much free content is shared to accomplish their end result. Since our E-reader within our app has a “Buy” button on each page of a full books as well as previews, don’t forget to type in a link on the “Add a book” page to take the reader to purchase on whatever site you make the most margin of profit.

16. Why do traditional publishers use BookGrabbr?

With BookGrabbr, traditional publishers will be able to promote their front-list and backlist titles at a very low cost versus more traditional marketing initiatives and current conventional strategies. The BookGrabbr social media strategy is more targeted. It leverages the current social media following of an author to virally promote that author’s content to many generations down their “social ladder.” Most social media users, and especially authors, have a following that are only one, if not two, generations away from people in foreign countries. Many authors in other countries, for example, have people in their social media following that live in other countries but speak and read the same language. It would be counter-intuitive for a publisher to spend thousands of dollars marketing to these other countries with the expectation of a reasonable return on investment. With BookGrabbr, publishers can now leverage their author’s following to market to people that speak and read the same language in multiple countries through the power of social sharing. Publishers can manage all of their authors from one dashboard within BookGrabbr. The analytics BookGrabbr supplies is very robust, and every publisher will benefit tremendously, both editorially and in marketing and promotion.

17. How are Children's books different when it comes to the BookGrabbr model?

Since most parents read children's books all the way through before they purchase them for their children an author/publisher will want to share the full copy of the book on BookGrabbr. When the author/publisher sends a notification to their "Grabbrs" they need to include a link for the parents to purchase the phsycial copy. We recommend authors/publishers share this more frequently and not wait too long before sending out the notfication to their "Grabbrs".

18. What is the return on investment for an author/publisher?

Authors and Publishers each have a different outlook on the return on investment of our program. Many authors are looking to increase the impressions out there (eyeballs that can see their book). More impressions equals more sales.Whether this is over time or directly linked to our site itself, an increase in impressions is directly linked to an increase in brand awareness. For $25 per month you can’t get impressions like that anywhere else.Some authors look directly at the “sales links” clicked. This analytic only measures those individuals who purchased the book on impulse. That is why most of the time this analytic climbs over time. Some people want to think about it, and, for example, sometimes readers want to purchase a physical copy. The sales link may only take them to where they can purchase a digital copy, or visa versa.Some authors are excited to know where their new fans are coming from and that is worth $25 a month.The reason we priced our services at $25 is because our survey of over 400 authors reported that 95% of them could afford this price and would in fact pay that amount to increase their brand awareness.The bottom line—we looked at other sites out there that offer “pay per click” campaigns, ads, and what we call “push” marketing, and found that our pricing is much lower than all of them.

19. I signed in as a publisher and want to share my book as an author. What do I do?

The first step on the “Manage your Dashboard page” as a Publisher is “email your author to share”. Simply email yourself and follow the directions on the email, similar to what an author would do.

20. Why is BookGrabbr Awesome?

Because we say we are and we have control over what is written in this section of our site! Just kidding. We would consider BookGrabbr to be awesome because we recommend authors use other marketing services in addition to BookGrabbr. Our platform is complementary to many other sites. We are not the “end-all-be-all” of book marketing. We are simply one service that is a piece of an ever-growing pie to help authors gain exposure in an ever-increasing noisy world…